A compound that blocks bitter taste will have a dramatic impact on the marketing of pharmacologically active oral dose preparations, foods, and beverages. The recent discovery of a bitter responsive G protein signal transduction pathway, allows the use of biochemical and molecular biological approaches to discover bitter taste antagonists. The purpose of this project is to utilize assays developed during Phase I to screen chemical libraries for novel bitter taste blockers. This project has three Milestones: (1) To adapt those assays developed in Phase I to a high throughput-screening format. (2) To identify novel bitter taste blockers by screening chemical libraries supplied by our strategic industrial partners. (3) To assess the efficacy of candidate bitter taste blockers by animal sensory taste evaluation. Linguagen Corp's strategic industrial partners will carry out all human toxicological and sensory evaluation. Phase III of this project will be to develop and market lead compounds discovered during Phase II. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: NOT AVAILABLE